Who Really Wants to Be Alone?

 

Ah, Greta Garbo. She was famous for saying she wanted to be alone.

Some people have crowded, even frantic, social lives. Some jealously guard their privacy to the point of barricading themselves and the places they live. Most of us live somewhere in between, trying to balance social and private lives, and we do it for different reasons. Sometimes it's just for the sake of sanity. Sometimes, we do it so that we can maintain a level of creativity that allows us to exercise the gifts we've been given. Sometimes, we do it so we make sure the members of our families aren't shortchanged in attention. Sometimes, we do it to grow our spirit. 

Greta is known for saying she wanted to be alone but it is less known that she made a distinction. She didn't want to be left alone, she said. She wanted to be let alone, and the difference for her was profound. The problem is that solitude has a partner - loneliness. No matter how much we sometimes crave peace and quiet, too much of it leads to a hollow result, a place where the echoes just get too loud. Sometimes, the solitude is worth the price. Sometimes not. 

It seems that solitude and community are not meant to be exclusive states. Each has a purpose. I don't need companions for everything - indeed, for some things they are counterproductive. But I do need them for some things. I've long held that a church community, for instance, is not the place I commune with God. It is far too loud for that. But it is the place I test and share that communion. 

There's an African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." As I hear that and think of the Kenyan Maasai - the tribe famous for running across the East African plains - and how they seem to be both alone and together at the same time, self-possessed but always aware they are in company with their fellow travelers.

I like the idea. It seems right to me. Finding the balance which, by the way, changes with times and situations, seems important. Right now, I feel it shifting. Having lived much of my adult life delighting in the company of friends often and well, the balance is shifting toward more quiet, maybe because I'm folding in the feathers of wings I spent a lifetime forging in preparation for final sleep. 

A friend gave me a copy of a book in 1990 to commemorate some plays we had read together with a group of others. It was a particularly sweet time and he included with it a quote by playwright and theologian Charles Williams:

"Much was possible to one in solitude; perhaps the final transmutations and achievements in the zones on the yonder side of the central knowledge were possible only to the spirit in solitude. But some things were possible only to one in companionship, and of these the most important one was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and blindness and bigotry and folly...balance - and movement in balance - as an eagle sails up on the wind - this was the truth of life and beauty in life."

Yes. I think Charles might have been right. 

Equality and the Philosopher Kings

 

It's hard to resist connecting theology and philosophy. They originally grew up together in the ancient world and it was only in the early 300s AD that they began to be forced apart. I maintain that they still belong together and are all the poorer for existing in different places, each denying the validity of the other, so today I'm going to try to piecemeal a partial reconciliation. Starting with Socrates.

Good old Socrates. Brilliant but elitist. He thought men were made of three kinds: The workers or producers who are ruled by appetite, the soldiers or protectors who are ruled by spirit, and the rulers or philosopher-kings, who are the advanced decision-makers ruled by logic. He thought men could be trained to advance from one kind to another, but most often, they were born to a certain type and were best off living within the confines of it. 

Was he right? Are there philosopher-kings who see farther and higher than others? Is is all right to praise these extraordinary people for this ability and to exult them for their vision? We do, you know. Are followers best off following? 

Well, think about it this way. We are all made in God's image, like God in that we are primarily spirit having a material experience. In this, we are all equal. But Socrates was right in that we may be equal by virture of our common humanity, but we are not the same. There are standouts among humans, standouts in courage and proclamation. They are not more human, but they are a different kind of human. By ignoring either of these premises, we have made ourselves poorer. We either deny the glory of man or deny his ability to attain the greatest heights to which he is able. I don't want to do either.

All humans are created equal. But they are not created the same. 

I once heard someone attest that a parent's highest responsibility was to help their child discover what they were made to do and help them attain it. They were right on two scores. First, that they were made by God and second that He made them for something particular in this world. One is based on faith and one is based on a school of philosophy. And they belong together.

Image: Psychiatric Times

75 and Counting - Growing Old as an Individual - Saying YES

I turned 75 yesterday. 

Time to pause. Time to reflect.

It's not the getting old thing that makes me stop and think. It's the living thing. The living, the fact that I'm still doing it, and since I am, I have to think about how. I thought I'd be sliding into home right about now, with little left to figure out. 

I was wrong.

Living never ceases to bring surprises, you see. But it's only the results that surprise. The getting there remains mostly consistent. By now, someone in my stage of life has developed a pattern or a worldview we use to navigate this living thing. Mine is two-pronged.

First, it's an attitiude of faith. It's consistently looking for God all around and in every activity. Second - and this is not contradictory - it's individualism. It's a view forward that drives me to do something no one around me is doing. Community is fulfilling and enjoyable, but it's aloneness that fosters an environment toward creation and invention. lt drives me toward success but often at the expense of fellowship. 

So I have to be careful. Careful not to isolate or insulate myself so much that I become unaware of the lives and struggles around me. 

 

But I take encouragement from the understanding that Jesus was an individualist. He was always aware of His mission and where it came from. Nobody shared it with HIm. He walked His path alone and never expected anything else. He finished what He started all by Himself. It was always supposed to be that way. 

However, He did it perfectly because He drew a community around Him at the same time He was doing it. He moved steadfastly along in His appointed way and taught while He did it so that when it was done, others could not only begin to understand but were able to follow. As He moved along, He accepted both the credit and the responsibility for His actions.

Others will not do what an individualist does, but they will watch and admire and take inspiration from it as they realize that such things are still possible. The people in this world are eager for the recognition of achievement and I'm finding that 75 is not too old to demonstrate it can still be done. And I'm finding that the only way is a simple one. 

Just say YES to what life brings my way. YES to trying something new and unexpected. YES to what sometimes looks dangerous but is offered as an opportunity. YES to relationships with people not at all like me. YES to what I'm not sure I can do but am willing to try anyway. YES to what I don't think I deserve. YES to uncertainty. YES to love.

So, it's 75 and counting. Here's to it. 

Bird on a Branch

 

I saw a bird this morning. 

It flew past my car as I was driving to the gym just after dawn and lit on the branch of a tree right in front of me. It was a slender branch, the only dead-seeming unleafed branch on an otherwise greened-out luxuriantly leafed maple. 

And the bird flew right to it, as though none of the others were quite right, somehow too unavailable or just not good enough. But the bird got a bit of a surprise. The branch barely held him. It was too small, too exposed, and it shook and swayed from even his slight weight. Oops. He almost fell off.

But he didn't. He could have flown away all right, but hung on until, finally, the branch stopped moving. It was bent, for sure, but it held and he seemed satisfied with his choice.

Why did I feel like him? Choosing the least likely, the least safe, the most exposed place to land, and then stubbornly hanging on? I've done it for sure. And it's not the first time. You'd think I'd be used to this by now.

It all started with the bet I made with my boss forty years ago. I wanted a job I wasn't qualified for and he offered me a deal - he'd give me the job, but if, in six months, I couldn't get up to speed and do it well, I'd get fired. No safety net. Well, it worked, and the job became a springboard for a whole series of promotions and life opportunities. 

And I took chances again and again. When I got my race car. When I met and married my late husband after two weeks of dating. When I became a teacher with no qualifications. When we moved to the farm. When I sold the farm and came here. When I went back to college to study philosophy. When I started preaching and teaching. And now, when I, who am turning a ripe 75 this week, said yes to a new love that comes with a whole list of cautions but promises more rewards than any I've ever known. 

Yup. me and the bird. Landing in the least likely place and sticking it. My branch is still rocking. 

image: Etsy

The Sun is But a Morning Star

 

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.--Henry David Thoreau, conclusion to Walden

Someone once reminded me that the stars we find so captivating are always out and shining. It's just that, during the day because the sun is so bright, we can't see them. In the end, then, it's not a question of beauty disappeared or hidden, it's more a question of having eyes to see it. We go to sleep with the stars and wake up to the sun, which is just another star, but one by which we can see and live. 

And that is what we're looking for. Beauty. Perspective. Vision. An uncluttered reality providing a clear path to living genuinely. Understanding that the star we want to wish upon at night is just another sun and that our sun is making its inevitable way around the curve of the earth and will show itself in due time. 

There is no darkness that does not eventually pass. There is no moment in the sun that lasts forever. Life, however, is incessant, insistent in showing itself regardless of darkness or light. Both exist all the time, separate but ever-present. It's up to us to walk with confidence into whatever is before us, knowing we are clothed in eternity.

Image: Morning star before sunrise, shutterstock.com

Life Near the Bone

However mean your life is, meet it and live it. Love your life, poor as it is. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. Life nearest the bone is the sweetest. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden

When HD Throeau want to live beside Walden Pond, he pared his life down to what he considered its essentials. The physical possessions he took to his 10 x 15 cabin, the one he built largely from castoffs with his own hands, were a cane bed, his green writing desk, a small table, and three chairs. He didn't do this because he had to, but because he thought there was something he had to learn, something that could be learned no other way than to remove all the clutter and the noise it generated. 

We usually have no idea how much noise surrounds us. I went to Alaska once, in 1985, and experienced for the only time a life without noise. We drove out into the what seemed like the wilderness to us, though in Alaskan terms, it was just, well, just Alaska. But we pulled over in the middle of nowhere, literally more than a hundred miles from any man-built structure, shut off the car and listened. That day, for the first and only time, I could HEAR the wind. And on it, the whirr of insect wings. And nothing else. No engine. No human. No bird or rustling of any animal, although they surely were there. It was just the earth. The earth breathing.

I think Thoreau had a similar experience by his pond cabin. Completely alone in a place that declared the vitality of life all around him. And he chronicled it. The birds, the fish, the habits of plants, the beavers. He had visitors, to be sure, but left the distinct impression that they were far less interesting than the revelations nature provided. And the revelation that stuck was that the material things we hang on our lives are too easily mistaken for life itself. Life is best lived, he thought, without as many of them as we can manage. Even undisturbed cartons stored in a shed or a basement exert a silent claim on our lives, a claim of attention and awareness. They are just THERE. Thoreau wanted to evaluate their noise and, living in the woods, he did.

He eventually went back to what we call civilization, of course, but with a renewed attitude, one he wanted to share with us. Hence the book. I am in a place in life where I have a chance, another chance, to do something similar, to sell my clothes and other possessions, if you will, so that I can lay final claim to my thoughts. I am paring my life down to see whether I can find the bone of it and I'm encouraged by HD's happy ending.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Bravo, HD. I endeavor to similarly advance.

Image: The Reader's Thoreau

Recognizing the Call

Hearing and listening. They aren't the same thing. We can hear before we listen. Listening is intentional. And the difference is important because the whole idea of listening is inherent in developing a deep life of faith. 

The admonition to listen is everywhere in the Old Testament - The Israelites are told to listen to God over and over, to listen to their prophets, and to listen to their king. Samuel presents himself to God by telling Him, "Speak, Lord, your servant listens." Psalms and Proverbs, the pleas and the wisdom, all include God and His servants listening. And of course, Jesus ends many parables with the final thought, "He who has ears, let him hear."

And you know why?

Because God is always calling. 

And we are not always listening.

Instead, we're usually talking.

"God, I pray for this." 

"God, please do that."

"God, why did you do (or allow) this?"

We just need to shut up once in awhile. If there are answers to these questions, they are not in the noise of prayers or even of worship. They are in that still, small voice we keep talking about but rarely heed.  They are in the silence because in silence is communion and, in communion, few answers are required. 

Oswald Chambers said, "The call of God is like the call of the sea. No one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him." 

He who has ears for God will hear Him. 

Image: dreamstime